cause I'm a vampire smile (you'll meet a sticky end)
by cartoon moomba
Summary: His descent begins with a glimpse of her neck and ends with her lips pressed boldly to the skin of his. Hope/Phantom!Lightning, pre-Lightning Returns.


**Disclaimer: **Final Fantasy XIII does not belong to me. Lyrics are "Vampire Smile" by Kyla La Grange.

**A/N: **Oops I came back. This is honestly the trilogy that captivates me the most, from the story to the characters to the tragedy. Sorry (not really) that this is not a happy one. Also, the time jumps are quite long so don't go into it thinking this takes place in the span of a year… or something.

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_cause I'm a vampire smile  
(you'll meet a sticky end.)_

o

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He hangs a new world in the sky with her name burning the back of his throat, and sets the countdown to destruction into motion.

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Hope's gradual descent into madness begins with the innocent glimpse of a pale neck beneath an Academy aide's scarf, her laughter drawing his eyes to her from the other side of the dining hall. The sound is a bright flicker of light in this world being consumed by waves of rolling darkness and the judgement of immortality, set down upon them seemingly by the gods themselves. His lips quirk up into a tired smile of his own, a response to the happiness exhibited by another, and she looks his way.

"Hope," her rosy pink mouth seems to address him, and her hair is the color of a woman long lost to him. It falls down gracefully one shoulder and brushes against the white skin of the column of her throat - he startles, his fork clattering to the tabletop, and she continues laughing with the man sitting opposite of her.

He zeroes in on the peeling paint of the wall behind them. _Get a grip, Hope, _he tells himself for the millionth time in his complicated existence and forces the bile back down his throat.

_This is no time for wishful thinking._

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"Hope," a voice calls his name in a dream and he flinches, jerking to stand upright in this abyss of memories and subconscious desires. A soft chuckle floats to his ears and he tenses under its caress, closing his eyes as the ghost fixes herself to his side. The breath of her exhale brushes past his cheek and then her fingers follow its trail, down the bones of his skull and tracing the dark circles under his eyes. A finger dips at his lower lip and he shudders.

"I've missed you," she croons and moves to wind her arms around his chest from behind. Her forehead comes to rest between the planes of his shoulders, calloused hands twisting in the fabric of his shirt. "Why won't you talk to me, Hope?" The pitch of her question turns desperate, burning past the barrier between them and straight into his skin. The heat spreads to encompass his every vein and he exhales under the pressure, under the fire building inside of him.

She waits in silence for him, as she always does, as he feuds with his demons and – always, gradually – loses.

"I can't do this," he whispers more so to himself than the figure pressing her body against his, this phantom that has been coming to haunt his dreams ever since he was a child. "You're not real, Light."

The grip she has on his ribcage tightens, her words coming out rushed but still steady as she responds. "I'm sorry I abandoned you, Hope. But I am here now, and we can finally be together. Isn't that what you want?" She presses her lips to the cloth of his shirt, her mouth spreading an inferno that scalds the insides of his soul fiercer than anything else ever has.

His hands clench into fists and one of hers slides down, massages the skin around his knuckles in a vain attempt at comfort. "Good-bye, Lightning," he tells her, and with years of practice, forces himself awake.

He knows it to be daytime by now but there is no sun anymore, here in Academia, and the clouds of strange murky grey darkness block out any chance for it to peek through. Hope twists in his sheets and presses his fists to his eyes until he feels dizzy and coloured patterns appear beneath his eyelids, forcing him further down into the pillow. His breath comes out ragged and weary as he thinks,

_You're not real. You tell me everything I want to hear and you're not real._

And then, for the briefest of moments,

_I'm sorry I couldn't save you._

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"So tell me about your latest project," she greets him on the cliffs of Gran Pulse, leaning back on her palms against the warm dirt and grass. In this preserved scene straight from their travels, Cocoon is hung above them by invisible hands and the sky is a bright and infinite blue. A pack of fiends makes its way down below in the valley they overlook, animal cries and the rustle of wind over grass a soft backdrop of noise to his dream. "You're teaming up with Snow and Sazh for it, right?" When he refuses to respond, as is often the case when they first meet, her lips quirk up into a wry smirk. "Oh, come on, Hope. You know I'm not going anywhere." Her hand reaches over and wraps around his bicep, her head following to rest on his shoulder as she leans over.

"And you and I both know you're not going to send me away just yet."

Shame settles at the bottom of his stomach at the words, and Hope forces himself not to look down at her face. He focuses instead on the broken shell of Cocoon in the distance, in the spot he imagines Palumpolum would sit at. "I found your temple," he tells her in lieu of a proper response, and feels her tense against his body. "Well, Etro's temple, but—"

"Etro is _dead_," comes the sharp interruption from his side, his former companion's voice dropped to an angry – almost grieving – pitch. "The goddess of death is gone and the crevice left behind by her absence must be filled." Her blunt nails bite painfully through his shirt into the skin of his arm and this time he _does _glance down – curses himself for it, for every little inch he gives to this tantalizing ghost – and is surprised to see the absolute look of anger on her face. His other hand rises to comfort her without thought before he catches himself, stilling his body and the responses it aches to give her.

Her face relaxes after a moment and then she looks up to meet his gaze that has lingered on her for far too long, vivid blue eyes meeting his and forcing his breath to remain trapped in his ribcage. "But let's not talk about that," she murmurs, reaching up to settle herself precariously over him. The air between their bodies feels electrified, Hope's body thrumming between pulling her closer and forcing her away.

"You're not real," he says with a certainty that nevertheless catches a moment of wavering between the moment he thinks the words and says them. "None of this is real."

Lightning chuckles and presses her forehead against his, the warmth of her body an enticing pull as if she is a burning star and he has been caught in her field of gravity. He falters, hesitant, and (_he is so tired, and the world's end has come, and he is only human_) settles one hand at the dip of her waist.

The smile that she sends him is brilliance and light and a sun's dying explosion. "I am as real as you want me to be," she says, and it sounds an awful lot like a promise.

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She dangles herself invitingly at the edges of his reality, in the dark corners of buildings and in the shadows birthed by the artificial glow of computers and light fixtures. She smirks at him behind Snow's broad back and brings one finger to her lips for secrecy when he lingers on her for too long. Her fingers tapping against the handle of her gunblade as she waits out his meetings is a melody that burrows into his brain and refuses to let go. The disappointed noises she makes when he attempts to dig further into the secrets of her crystalized form in the far reaches of Etro's temple, perched upon Etro's eternal throne – and her fingers massaging his shoulders, breath fanning out over the shell of his ear as she leans down.

"Is it so hard to believe that I can be in two places at once?" She questions, a note of frustration in the coaxing tone of her voice. "That the body in the temple is nothing but a frozen shell, while my soul remains free—"

He swirls around in his chair and _(almost, by instinct, he's fallen so far) _catches her hips with his hands. "And you want me to believe that you're here, wasting your time with me instead of searching for Serah?" The question hangs heavy in the air between them, breeding a hundred more things he wants to say to her but dares not for fear of her leaving him forever. He holds back a recoil of disgust at the realization and wonders just when his fall had begun.

Lightning softens under his touch, her body mouldable in his grip and smiles; he wonders just when her smiling has become such a regular occurrence for him. "I know exactly where Serah is," she reassures him and brushes a stray lock of hair away from his face. "She's safe. And I am here with you. Exactly where I want to be."

She kisses him then, softly, just barely brushing her lips against his, and he lets her.

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Night after night she comes to him now, loving and wanting and _perfect. _

"Submit to me," she bids against his heated skin in the twisting abyss of the dreams, pressing her searching mouth against him, and by the goddess how he _wants_ her, straining and aching for this rose haired ghost haunting his life from the crystallized beyond. She is a goddess now, is she not? He has seen her preserved grace situated upon Her throne in Etro's fallen temple, no longer bowed before the absent deity but filling the crevices in creation left behind by the disappearance of the life giver - is she not Etro herself now, then, this beautiful goddess of death and rebirth?

Her throaty voice coos soothing promises into his ear, and she presses butterfly kisses against his eyelids and when his defenses crumble, she takes him roughly and gently and lovingly and however else he desires, however else pleases _her_. Her voice ghosts across his skin, reassuring with all the things he wishes to hear, wishes to say to her –

"I'm yours for all eternity, Hope, my darling, my dearest, I will never leave you again just tell me you are mine, Hope, let me in and I will eternally stand at your side."

_(He is so tired, and there's a voice in his head that is growing weaker with each passing night that he spends in her arms. There is no hope left in this world heading towards its end.) _

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She is there when he sleeps and she is there when he is awake and in the split second when he wakes every morning, he tries to remember – had she truly ever disappeared? Because when he looks over she rests beside him in the bed, her naked chest rising and falling with every soft breath and her hair spilling over his pillows like ink against a blank page.

"If you love me," he tells her sleeping form one day, breaking and splintering on the inside, his restraint collapsing alongside his memory, "Let me go."

She shifts in her sleep, startled awake by his voice, and sends him a languid smile. He closes his eyes and almost truly wishes her to be gone when he opens them.

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The day Hope finds Sazh and his son gone is the day that he enters his office and finds her leaning against the desk there, nonchalant and as real as himself. A lazy smirk stretches at her lips when she spots him, her arms crossed over her chest as she regards him with a searching look. "Long day?" Lightning questions, sympathetic as he remains lingering at the threshold of the room. A trace of worry slips into her features and she holds out one hand, beckoning for him to come closer. "Hope?"

"Lightning," her name slips out of his mouth and then he is across the room crushing her body to his, pressing his mouth against hers. "_Light,_" he demands and she gives, oh, how she _gives _with her soft mouth and grasping hands, sliding his Academy jacket off his shoulders until it crumples to the floor. He hitches her hips up and pushes her onto the surface of the desk with disregard for any research lying there _(something about a savior, a savior will come _he had thought at some point, he remembers, but what does it matter _now _when she is _right here_) and divests her of her clothing and presses hungry kisses up the column of her neck. Her nails rake at the skin of his back as she encourages him further, pressing her chest closer against his and slipping her hands towards his belt.

He tells her he loves her, then, whispered desperately into the rose color of her hair, and her voice begs him for a promise:

"_Tell me you are mine, Hope, mine forever more eternally, and I shall be yours and we will be together for all infinity. Tell me, Hope, _promise _me." _

And for a suspended moment in this time that no longer flows, he is fourteen again and the woman below him is a mother figure running her fingers through his hair and pressing a knife into his clammy hands—

—and she is suddenly an ardent lover with her mouth around his cock as he grasps at her hair, begs her, _"Light, please" _—

—and he is inside of her, worshipping at the altar of the goddess that She is—

—and She is his love, his beloved, his Queen and ruler and servant and daughter and creation—

—and she is a resplendent figure in white on their wedding day, and there is a bedroom in their house at New Bodhum in which a crib stands and they watch over the sleeping infant inside with her head pressed to his shoulder and _he loves her_—

He loves her and all the voices screaming inside his head _stop_. He breaks _for_ her, shatters into pieces that leave him limp against her taunt body and pressing the promise into the curve of her stomach.

"I'm yours, I'm yours, _I'm yours_."

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He hangs a new world in the sky for her on strings and leaves to be by her side, his lover with the soft twisting smile and the beckoning eyes that promise him, "Into a better world, forever".


End file.
